Battlefield
by Raven Wolff
Summary: She realized, it was all an illusion. No wonder it was so beautiful.


It was easy falling in love with her. Too easy. She was all sunshine, all summer...you think that even when it was in the midnight of the winter solstice and you can hear her voice or think about her...just even the thought of her, the whole winter can turn into the most sunshiny July summer day.

Her clothes smell like the summer flowers that you used to smell when you were still younger. Being with her, it was so refreshing – too different from the routine that you have for a life. A life of black and white and multitude of gray shades, that is. She was so beautiful, inside and out. Her life was so beautiful, so beautiful that because of the beauty of her life, she was able to make yours a beautiful one, too.

It was all long distance phone calls, inter-state text messages and catching schedules and sleepless nights and early mornings filled with loving greetings. She was all bursting out of loving messages. It was all staring at the same stars at night, it was all but wishing on the same star.

Everytime the morning comes, you open your eyes and the sun will be shining through your tattered room filled with too much dirty clothes from yesterday. But instead, you smile at the sunshine because you know that at the same time, she was also staring at the same ball of fire that was dancing in your eyes at the moment. Next to that sunshine moment in your morning, you know she'll send you a text message, telling you how beautiful you are even when she can't actually see you.

It kind of amuses you because you were that kind of person who really needs to see it to believe it, but with her, you feel like you're sent into another universe where all these things don't really get to you. You know that your relationship with her had started to change you into someone else you never knew. The cynicism that was once yours was fading into the depth of your personality and you start to believe that somehow, you can change.

The days passed and the loving messages, the gestures of affection – it was all a routine to you. Somehow, that routine seemed to make you forget the girl you once met over a social networking site. Over time, the outbursts of love when you're talking to each other on the phone became more and more blanched. The words of love and affectionate romanticism had finally become more and more trite to you.

You made a world for the both of you. You dreamed together, you built each other a home, made a family out of your dreams, made the stars and sky – and you tried so hard to protect that world you have created in your imaginations.

One drop was all it took to flood out what remained of your love. It was like fire that caught on a dry wheat field on a dry, windy autumn afternoon. It was unstoppable. The torrent was washing you down. You finally realize that this was the reality. The world you have created for the both of you were starting to crumble down – and all the fantasies with it are toppling down each other, too.

You were too strong for each other. The harsh reality that you will never end up together has finally caught up to you and the idea of you being together seemed to be so painful to remember. It was once a good idea, but now it had turned into a war between you and her and the reality.

You try to salvage what was left of it, though. You try to convince her that you can work it out. You did it all because you feel that you weren't enough for a person as perfect as her. You can kill and die for her. You can wait for her for forever and a day to make up her mind, you can run miles and miles for her just to reach and hold her hand, you can do anything for her – everything for her.

But she said she can't do everything for you. She's afraid not for you, but for her. To you, that was what it was like, that is. However, she was convincing you that the problem was not you. That it wasn't your fault. That it was her issue and you can't get it because it was her. She can't free herself from the fear of being judged by the people around her.

Now, talking to her seemed like a battle. A battle within yourself. It was a battle you know you were going to lose in the end. Because, you win, but at the same time, you know you'll end up in a curled-up ball on the floor and crying.

You knew it was coming. You knew that all that you had was once an illusion. It was an illusion that you kept thinking a reality. The thing is, you included her in your plans and now that she's gone, you don't know what will happen – because your plan was plummeting down.

The surface tension has been broken and all that love you once thought existed was lost. It was all a lie. You have to let each other go now. There's no point in holding on to something you both know would hurt you in the end. Once, the two of you seemed to be a good idea, but now what seemed like a good idea was all but a battle of shifting feelings and tears and heartache and apologies of being not enough even if you know you both tried your best and it was still not enough.

You know it had to stop. You're both too strong for each other, and at the same time, never enough for each other. So you pick up the phone and speed-dial her number.

"Hello?" her voice was bland, blasé and still so beautiful and cheery just like the first time you had called her and you wanted to cry then and there. But you push on.

"Rachel," you start, your voice breaking.

"Yes?" her voice hitched. You know she knew about this and she's just waiting for the bubble to break.

"I'm sorry..." you say, tears flooding your eyes, just like how your lies are flooding out of your tongue like a torrential tropical rain.

"I'm sorry, too," she sniffed on the other line. You she's crying too. Suddenly, it felt like it was so hard to break someone's heart. But you have to do it – break her heart and break yours, too. "I'm sorry, Quinn...we can't be."

"I know. I...I understand. Good bye, Rachel," you say and hold the phone onto your ear, waiting for her to answer or hang up, for that matter. But the beep you anticipate to come after a call has been disconnected did not come.

Instead you hear her shuffle on the floor of her carpeted loft, and soft sniffles came to your auditory senses. You can hear her crying on the other line. She might or might not have dropped her phone without disconnecting the call.

Both of you had laid down your guns and guards now. You and her – you're both unarmed in the battlefield, with nothing but the naked, harsh, hurting and ugly truth with you. You both lost this battle.

Her cries were at a distance from your ear now, for you have dropped the phone in your hand. You can't bring yourself to disconnect the call that would probably be the last phone call you'll have with her. You curl into a ball on your floor and the tears come like activated waterworks.

It was all an illusion, you realize. It was a fantasy you have created for yourself and hers, too. No wonder it was so beautiful.


End file.
